I never really paid much attention to wind direction at flydown, this thread will make me think of it though. Most of the places I hunt are pretty thick woods, so I'm usually not very close to the roost at flydown. Most of the time I hunt areas where turkeys like to spend time or regularly pass through.

Those Teal are probably the gamest duck out there. To me, trying to pick single birds out of a gang of Greenwings on a brisk tailwind low over the marsh is about the toughest wing shot there is. Treerooster, do you ever get into any of those Cinnamon Teal in Colorado? I saw some at Jackson Reservoir and Horsetooth when I was in Colorado 33 years ago, but duck season was not in at the time. The Bluewings are not in full plumage when they come through here in early Fall and it is cold enough that they're usually long gone by the time they have their full color. I've seen some pretty drake Bluewing Teal here around Easter when they're on they way back north.

Remember first that I am the shut-in who hunts the same 200 acres every year for over a decade. Also remember that I am constantly plagued with high winds at camp before and during season.

My turkeys fly down wherever they want. Yes, normally they will pitch down uphill, but I've seen them go uphill, downhill, crossways-- any way you can think. Wind speed and direction seldom seem to change their minds one way or the other. I was out scouting this morning. The one flock I heard fly down went south along a N/S hollow heading with the wind towards the mouth of the hollow. The other flock flew down a few minutes later from the other side of the ridge. They flew uphill and crosswind.

As to what they do after flying down, I read years ago that turkeys like to find water. So I ruined my early turkey career finding standing water and positioning myself between that and the roost. After realizing that I had been misinformed, I set about making a life's work of finding out what turkeys do after flydown. The truth is that after a hard night on the roost, the first thing they like to do after pitching down is to find some lowly track in the woods. There in the half-light of dawn, there is a vague far off sound. Eventually it resolves into the sound of a motor and after a while, you see the headlights of a mysterious unmarked truck rolling down that track. The turkeys mull about anxiously as the truck draws up into the turn-around and stops. It is a vending truck. A strange little foreign man gets out and opens the sides of the truck and begins serving the turkeys coffee, sticky buns, doughnuts, and wrapped breakfast sandwiches. After 20 minutes or so, the driver closes up, turns the truck around and heads off. The turkeys smoke cigarettes and mull about for a while. They then go over to a nearby sewer lid, work together to get the lid up, and then pop down the hole before pulling the lid over themselves. I have seen this happen many times. You just have to be very quiet. Find a lonely road with a turnout that contains cigarette butts, stick bun wrappers and turkey feathers. Wait. You'll see.

shaman wrote:I set about making a life's work of finding out what turkeys do after flydown. The truth is that after a hard night on the roost, the first thing they like to do after pitching down is to find some lowly track in the woods. There in the half-light of dawn, there is a vague far off sound. Eventually it resolves into the sound of a motor and after a while, you see the headlights of a mysterious unmarked truck rolling down that track. The turkeys mull about anxiously as the truck draws up into the turn-around and stops. It is a vending truck. A strange little foreign man gets out and opens the sides of the truck and begins serving the turkeys coffee, sticky buns, doughnuts, and wrapped breakfast sandwiches. After 20 minutes or so, the driver closes up, turns the truck around and heads off. The turkeys smoke cigarettes and mull about for a while. They then go over to a nearby sewer lid, work together to get the lid up, and then pop down the hole before pulling the lid over themselves. I have seen this happen many times. You just have to be very quiet. Find a lonely road with a turnout that contains cigarette butts, stick bun wrappers and turkey feathers. Wait. You' ll see.

The teal are not in breeding plumage here either so identifying Cinnamon teal is difficult. Almost all the teal are gone by early Oct. The Cinnamon bill is a bit longer most of the time and there are some plumage differences but I am not that familiar with all of them.

Cinnamon teal are around where I hunt but are pretty rare. I see lots of teal in the spring while turkey hunting when they are colored out and a Cinnamon is a rare sight. I have killed a few that I believe are Cinnamon but its just an educated guess on my part.

. . . after pulling the sewer lid back over the hole, the turkeys navigate through miles of sewer to emerge hours later in a culvert beside a major thoroughfare. You will frequently find them in these culverts feeding on your way home from hunting. In places like Ohio, where you can only hunt until Noon, the turkeys are relatively safe. If they survive flydown and the trip to the roach coach, they only have to slip into the sewer and find their way to the exit. By this time, the hunters are already out of the woods and the turkeys can slip back into the woods and loaf until it is time to fly back to their roost.

I've never really payed any attention to the wind while hunting turkeys unlike deer where you have to beat their nose as well. I've hunted the same land all my life a deep valley with 8oo acres of flat fields and steep wood cover hills the wind here blows here mostly north or south. in all my years of turkey hunt I come to count on that at fly down the turkeys will come off the roost circle into the wind and land in the fields and work their way back into the woods. There is a swamp on my land loaded with ducks and geese and I notice that geese always seem to land with the wind....wayne

Thinking back on it, I remember a few gobblers flying down into a cross wind, kind of like they were perpendicular to the breeze, but I think that had more to do with where they were flying down to than anything else. I never saw which way they were facing when they hit the ground because of underbrush.

In April of 1996 I watched a gobbler on a limb and he'd switch directions on the limb from time to time to gobble. The wind was breezy from the west. Some gobbles were directed southwest and some went to the northeast. The first day I saw him, he flew down away from me to the southwest, though I never heard or saw any hens with him. He only gobbled once on the ground. A few days later (the next time I hunted there) the wind was also westerly. This time, he flew down to the northeast. He gobbled twice on the ground, but died 21 yards from the end of my trusty single shot. I believe he flew down my direction because of the opening in front of me and because he was interested in the clucks I'd tossed his direction. I went to see where he flew down the first day, but it was across the property boundary and I could only guess about where he landed.

Thanks for the teal pics Treerooster. That bottom teal looks like a Cinnamon to me. When they have all their color, they almost don't look real. I used to hunt a chain of many ponds together that were surrounded by huge corn and sunflower fields out near Hudson. The very last pond was the longest walk from the parking area, but it was the best to hunt by far, because most people wouldn't walk or tote decoys that far. We'd wait until the snow started mid day and hunt there the following morning. Ducks that had been trapped in the fields overnight by heavy snow would flock to those ponds just after daylight. One time we had a flock of about 2,500 mallards and pintails try to set in our decoys. It looked like a tornado of ducks and was nothing short of spectacular. We both limited out in a few seconds.